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GF1-IR, take 2

Howard

New member
Jack,

I appreciate that you documented the issues that you experienced with your initial conversion and what was done to correct the situation.

I also agree with you and Diane, the ir camera that is sitting in your closet does no good when there is an ir shooting opportunity.

Howard
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
Jack that one image I would like to do some vignetting and than add some grain. I think our Salton Sea workshop everyone could come away with some really cool looks . Reason I want to get one before we leave so the folks can play with it also. Having at least two IR camera's in hand would be great. I'm going to sell the 14-140 so I can get a GF1. I decided . I'm really after one lens anyway the 7-14mm. I'm a wide angle freak
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
Uwe I like that also very nice combo going on.

My thinking is the IR gives you a great opportunity to try something different in your work but also gives you a lot of play time in your raw program and/or PS to learn further skills. As a commercial shooter I personally would love to have the other portfolio to show my personal work which i don't do very often or maybe better said force me to get out and do more personal work. But end of the day I want it to have a different look than my real work. The IR intrigues me to get out there more often for that. I did a lot of IR film in years past and to me it was fun.
 

Jack

Sr. Administrator
Staff member
Minor update:

I just confirmed that adding a stronger IR over the lens works just fine if you want that. I used a B+W 093 opaque IR filter which is equivalent to a Wratten 87C. An 87C trims IR at ~~ 850nm, so basically no visible light at all gets through. It works fine and you can still compose normally via the LCD display. Light is cut about 2 stops above what the 715 conversion does, but I still maintained very easily hand-holdable shutter speeds. My 715 WB rendered a blue-ish cast monochromatic image, so I'd set WB2 to this filter if I were going to use it a lot. But then since it is totally monochromatic, it doesn't matter what you point it at to set get neutral tones and is easy to set whenever.
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
FYI I just bought a GF1 and it is being converted to IR and will have it on the workshop for folks to try out as well. Yes the Gear slut strikes again. LOL
 

scho

Well-known member
Minor update:

I just confirmed that adding a stronger IR over the lens works just fine if you want that. I used a B+W 093 opaque IR filter which is equivalent to a Wratten 87C. An 87C trims IR at ~~ 850nm, so basically no visible light at all gets through. It works fine and you can still compose normally via the LCD display. Light is cut about 2 stops above what the 715 conversion does, but I still maintained very easily hand-holdable shutter speeds. My 715 WB rendered a blue-ish cast monochromatic image, so I'd set WB2 to this filter if I were going to use it a lot. But then since it is totally monochromatic, it doesn't matter what you point it at to set get neutral tones and is easy to set whenever.
Jack,
Interesting information and good to know that the GF1 sensor seems to be exhibiting high iR sensitivity, even with the higher wavelength cut filters. The blue monochrome was exactly my experience with the 87C years ago when I first started working with IR using the old Nikon 950. Some discussion here about the 87C blue monochromatic images.
 

Jack

Sr. Administrator
Staff member
Interesting -- mine were nowhere near that blue, more like cool or selenium-toned. I'll test it out more thoroughly tomorrow and post some images.
 

Don Libby

Well-known member
Jack - I can't tell you how pleased I am that you got the IR conversion figured out. The very first images of the railroad are amazing and the others will good. I've found when shooting IR I have to rethink my basic strategy and think in IR terms. The hotter the day is the sunnier the day is the better the images will be. Deep blue skies and lots of fluffy clouds are just icing on the cake as well.

Looking forward to seeing many more IR images here.

Don
 

Jack

Sr. Administrator
Staff member
Jack,
Interesting information and good to know that the GF1 sensor seems to be exhibiting high iR sensitivity, even with the higher wavelength cut filters. The blue monochrome was exactly my experience with the 87C years ago when I first started working with IR using the old Nikon 950. Some discussion here about the 87C blue monochromatic images.
Okay, here is the 87C update as promised. And yet again the results are AWSOME!!! (at least iMO :))

Here is the 715 out of the camera shot, using my in-camera WB1 set for the 715 conversion:



Here is the same shot except I added the 87C filter. I did set an in-camera WB2 for it and used it here:



Note that it the shakes on the building roof across the street are painted a barn red, which you can detect on a good monitor in this web jpeg. It is a very overcast day here, so no direct sun but some brightness from it. Both images were processed "as-shot" in C1 except for my standard identical raw conversion settings tuned to for the GF1 IR camera. (In point of fact, I would tweak them a bit for the GF1 with the 87C going forward, mostly in the form of some additional capture sharpening.) The main thing I note other than the fairly pure and neutral monochrome tone in the 87C shot, is the evergreen vegetation in the background went a lot more white. At 100% pixel view, the 87C shot also exhibits slightly more IR veiling. The exposures were f6.3 ISO 400, the 715 bare camera was 1/800th while the 87c dropped to 1/250th, or 1-2/3 stops less.

Finally, in CS with the 87C raw converted out to a 16-bit Prophoto tiff, you can read some slight color as you drag the dropper across the image. The RGB values are all within maybe 2 to 3 point maximum spread thoughout, and when you convert to sRGB the image becomes a very nearly pure, and perfectly neutral gray monochrome -- note that I did NOT desaturate or convert the 87C image to grayscale, it is shown as-shot save for raw and web jpeg conversion.

Honestly, I couldn't be happier -- I now have the best of both worlds for IR with just a simple filter addition!

PS: FWIW, I use a "HeavyStar" W46 metal lens hood on my 20/1.7 lens. The nifty thing here is that HeavyStar cuts standard filter threads for the light baffles on the insides of their hoods, and in the case of the W46 that thread size happens to 52mm -- or identical to the filter thread on the 14-45 kit lens, so my 52mm 87C filter can be easily mounted on either lens.
 

ustein

Contributing Editor
I've found when shooting IR I have to rethink my basic strategy and think in IR terms. The hotter the day is the sunnier the day is the better the images will be. Deep blue skies and lots of fluffy clouds are just icing on the cake as well.


Don
We will re-activate our 5D IR (inspired by this thread). This is the time for the CA valley as the hills are green.
 

scho

Well-known member
Okay, here is the 87C update as promised. And yet again the results are AWSOME!!! (at least iMO :))

Here is the 715 out of the camera shot, using my in-camera WB1 set for the 715 conversion:



Here is the same shot except I added the 87C filter. I did set an in-camera WB2 for it and used it here:



Note that it the shakes on the building roof across the street are painted a barn red, which you can detect on a good monitor in this web jpeg. It is a very overcast day here, so no direct sun but some brightness from it. Both images were processed "as-shot" in C1 except for my standard identical raw conversion settings tuned to for the GF1 IR camera. (In point of fact, I would tweak them a bit for the GF1 with the 87C going forward, mostly in the form of some additional capture sharpening.) The main thing I note other than the fairly pure and neutral monochrome tone in the 87C shot, is the evergreen vegetation in the background went a lot more white. At 100% pixel view, the 87C shot also exhibits slightly more IR veiling. The exposures were f6.3 ISO 400, the 715 bare camera was 1/800th while the 87c dropped to 1/250th, or 1-2/3 stops less.

Finally, in CS with the 87C raw converted out to a 16-bit Prophoto tiff, you can read some slight color as you drag the dropper across the image. The RGB values are all within maybe 2 to 3 point maximum spread thoughout, and when you convert to sRGB the image becomes a very nearly pure, and perfectly neutral gray monochrome -- note that I did NOT desaturate or convert the 87C image to grayscale, it is shown as-shot save for raw and web jpeg conversion.

Honestly, I couldn't be happier -- I now have the best of both worlds for IR with just a simple filter addition!

PS: FWIW, I use a "HeavyStar" W46 metal lens hood on my 20/1.7 lens. The nifty thing here is that HeavyStar cuts standard filter threads for the light baffles on the insides of their hoods, and in the case of the W46 that thread size happens to 52mm -- or identical to the filter thread on the 14-45 kit lens, so my 52mm 87C filter can be easily mounted on either lens.
Jack,
Many thanks for posting these images and filter tips. Seems like the 87C is an ideal filter to have for easy, out of camera neutral IR images on a 715nm converted G/GF1. I also have the Heavystar W46 for my 20/1.7 lens so good to know about the fit for the 52mm filter.
 

Jack

Sr. Administrator
Staff member
Jack,
Many thanks for posting these images and filter tips. Seems like the 87C is an ideal filter to have for easy, out of camera neutral IR images on a 715nm converted G/GF1. I also have the Heavystar W46 for my 20/1.7 lens so good to know about the fit for the 52mm filter.
My pleasure Carl -- it really does make for a very versatile IR camera I think!
 

Jack

Sr. Administrator
Staff member
So we've posted a thread in the images to share section where I used the GF1-IR some more and received this question:

I want to see even more straight out of camera colour! My wallet of course is begging you not to... :ROTFL:
Since it was important, I figured I'd add the response to this thread for posterity. The whole thread where the above question originated is here: http://forum.getdpi.com/forum/showthread.php?t=14187

So... You should realize that the color rendering is *VERY* dependent on lighting. The shots in Alviso of the railroad tracks were under heavy overcast, so less IR is penetrating, making the color spectrum more prominent. Yesterday, we had more open sunshine and so the color becomes less prominent -- here are 3 examples, all basically as shot out of the camera, except I even pumped up saturation by 10 points just so you could better see the hint of color:

(The white in the tree is mistletoe)






What is cool, is you do see what you're getting on the real lCD in live-view form, a bit handier than shooting it in visible and chimping. Also, you get an almost sepia/selenium split-tone effect straight out of the camera, especially if you desaturate by about 50 points. Still figuring it all out myself...
 

scho

Well-known member
So we've posted a thread in the images to share section where I used the GF1-IR some more and received this question:



Since it was important, I figured I'd add the response to this thread for posterity. The whole thread where the above question originated is here: http://forum.getdpi.com/forum/showthread.php?t=14187

So... You should realize that the color rendering is *VERY* dependent on lighting. The shots in Alviso of the railroad tracks were under heavy overcast, so less IR is penetrating, making the color spectrum more prominent. Yesterday, we had more open sunshine and so the color becomes less prominent -- here are 3 examples, all basically as shot out of the camera, except I even pumped up saturation by 10 points just so you could better see the hint of color:

(The white in the tree is mistletoe)






What is cool, is you do see what you're getting on the real lCD in live-view form, a bit handier than shooting it in visible and chimping. Also, you get an almost sepia/selenium split-tone effect straight out of the camera, especially if you desaturate by about 50 points. Still figuring it all out myself...
Very nice images Jack. Are you using the accessory EVF or LCD and if the former does it gain up and make fine focusing difficult in manual mode?
 

Jack

Sr. Administrator
Staff member
Hi Carl:

I'm just using the rear LCD to compose and shoot. I find the larger rear LCD works better for me in general for MF with the GF1, so I no longer use the EVF at all.
 

Amin

Active member
Thanks for sharing this great information and photography, Jack. After seeing this thread, I'm strongly considering sending my G1 in for conversion. Any reason why that camera would be harder to convert than a GF1?
 
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